Wild
by Royal Lady
Summary: She walked off, a figure neatly clad in black, twirling wild brown hair with one finger as she took swigs from a bottle of lemonade. One-shot.


**Hi~! It's been a long time since I published any new stuff, so I took this out of the cupboard and dusted it off. It's been hanging around for a coupel of months and I finally remembered to put it out. So please, enjoy this little one-shot. I present...**

_Wild_

Her mouth twisted into a wry grin, and he blinked.

She was still shaking her head at him as she removed the bobby pins stabbed into her neat, glossy bun. Clenching the metal pieces between her lips, she first undid the velvet ribbon, then the tie holding her hair in place. She tipped her head forward, shaking out her dark-chocolate locks. Wild, he thought, not suited at all.

Of course, she was attired for a funeral- she always seemed to be, with a neat white collar over a black cardigan and a pleated skirt, hanging to mid-calf. He had never seen bare skin, not once: black stockings always covered her legs, and shiny mary janes were her footwear of choice. It was just more appropriate on an occasion like today's. Some rich aunt or great aunt twice removed had died. He was there for the reading of the will. He had suspected he would receive a clock and a great deal of old paperwork, but he had kept that to himself (he was right in the end: the clock itself was an atrocious article, stubby and squat and not working at all). She was much more immediately related, probably (well, he could not remember more) entitled to some vintage dresses, valuable jewelleries of an indiscernible amount. Then again, he was the son of an associate, not a real relation at all.

No, the wavy brown locks snaking over her black-clad shoulders were too wild for the rest of her. He took a swig from the glass bottle of warm lemonade, staring at the leather portfolio resting in her slender gloved hands. Her eyes danced wickedly, and she ran hand through her loose hair. She stared at the grey velvet ribbon between her fingers, and glanced at him through her lashes.

There it was again- that wildness, that look that didn't fit. He blinked again, and her shiny black shoes tapped against the neat brick pavement as she took one, two, three steps closer. She gently tied the grey velvet ribbon around his wrist, and reached up to run a hand through his strawberry-blonde hair. Her eyelashes fluttered- they were ridiculously and inordinately long! He was appalled by how much he noticed her. She gently prised the bottle of lukewarm lemonade from his fingers. Lifting it, she carefully placed it against her lips in the self-same spot that he had just drunk from.

She walked off, a figure neatly clad in black, twirling wild brown hair with one finger as she took swigs from a bottle of lemonade.

* * *

><p>His sister had, of course, gone charging off, eloping with the, what was it, the novelist? That was right, the solemn, thoughtful novelist- the very same one she had met not one year ago in a little down-town café, nothing up to the standards of their family. Well, she had never been quiet, or meek, or tame. She was always loud, and colour, and fun, and light. Even though she did have a terrible temper, and a bad habit of charging off.<p>

Well, she had eloped with the dark-haired, dark-eyed novelist, for somewhere as illustriously rebellious, fantastically class-less as they could imagine. He couldn't say he didn't approve. They were well suited to one another. They were both rebellious, but he was the only one who could really calm her down. The house was in a complete state of disarray for days afterward. Of course, there was the whole nasty business of her previous arranged marriage to cancel. The groom-to-be, what-was-his-name (Dallas? Dalton? Dylan?), was, of course, devastated. So was the mother of the bride: oh, to think of all the profits and business opportunities lost by her shameless daughter's desertion- She had outright swooned, fainting onto a strategically placed chaise lounge with one hand draped over her eyes.

He had to restrain himself from snorting.

Well, his sister never was any good at being one of them. She just wasn't cold enough for it. He suspected he wasn't either, but he did possess some degree of collected level-headedness. She was always running around, climbing trees, flirting and throwing mud, being outrageously unfeminine and yet maddeningly desirable (or so he had been told). When she was happy, she was life and fun and light. When she was mad, she was _mad, _stamping her combat-boots and hurling dangerous projectiles, all with a side salad of sarcasm and stinging insults. She never was neat, never tied up her hair (even cut it with kitchen scissors- oh, the horror!), and her rooms were a pigsty, a dreary hinterland that the maids had been permanently ordered out of.

Not that he didn't love his sister.

She was just- wild. Wild. That was the only way to describe it. Not wild, like the girl at the funeral- Bella? Stella? Fionella- no, it was plain Ella. Not wild in that way, but wild in a loudness-and-charging-off-ness way. Ella was all wicked looks and sidelong glances. She was perfect on the outside, something his mother would love. Not that they would recover so quickly as to draw up a marriage contract for _him_. Max had mattered to a point, even though was the disgrace of the family, the shameful and rebellious daughter.

As he sat on the back porch, staring into the distance as he swigged some (again) warm lemonade, he wished her and her soulmate (the novelist Nicholas, who had insisted on being called Fang- one of the most remarkable men he'd ever hope to meet) a good life and a good marriage together, as well as many beautiful babies (to think of how his sister would shriek!). One corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. If happiness didn't come to them, well, Max would still go stomping off in search of it, shaking people down and taking hostages, all in that same pair of combat boots that he'd bought her when she and Fang had officially announced themselves.

They were beautiful people. Not perfect, but beautiful nevertheless. They deserved it.

* * *

><p>Looking back, he realised that things would have turned out the same no matter what they had chosen. It was only a matter of time after she first called him Iggy, with no prompting needed. She really was wild, in the same colour and fun way as his older sister. They, too, had run off in a beach kombi, but only after they'd finished their schooling to a tertiary level. He'd packed everything, and she had packed everything, plus a tent and an air mattress. They agreed that there would be all sorts of sex-before-marriage nonsense. They did each other silly that night. Life was an endless round of concerts, and begging, and going to the toilet in trenches dug with their bare hands: they didn't care. They loved it.<p>

Somehow, his qualifications came into play, and they ended up living in the same fantastically class-less place as his sister and her husband. They were already raising two rambunctious, undisciplined, grubby, snotty, mud-throwing, hair-pulling feminists. Max suspected her youngest would, in time, become a homosexual. Fang shrugged and filled another page in his brown-paper notebook. He and his Ella moved in next door, and soon enough they, too, had their own little monsters. The little monsters grew up; he and Ella finally gave up on the air mattress and the trench-toilets. They got jobs: he was a graphic designer, she was a much-sought after post-modern artist, with a side job in interior decorating.

Their house was a haven of wild: tie-dye, and hemp and more than the healthy amount of flower-child symbolism, especially when his youngest had left a few crayons in her pocket on wash day. They did yoga, and had family séances. They kept snakes and frogs, and his eldest collected quite a following online. She was more of a progressive-metal rebel, and blasted Lordi just to piss off the crotchety woman on the other side of the fence. Ella couldn't say she disagreed. His middle child, well, he was more inclined to Wicca and Paganism, and could name the Norse gods off the bat in reverse alphabetical order. His youngest made candles and clothes and macramé and boatloads of pressed flowers with her mother, and now she was making them herself. He sighed, thinking how quickly they grew up.

He remembered, when the kids were little, he and Ella would take Max's kids to their house to watch movies as Max and Fang enjoyed their newly installed hot tub. After a while, they had put their collective foot down and demanded the use of the tub in return for their services. That had worked out well, but there was no use denying that they did come very close to doing the nasty- oh, the joyousness of health ed class. When they emerged in the mornings, tousled and grinning ecstatically, his oldest would snort and hand them both a cup of black coffee.

His oldest was very free with her dating. If he remembered correctly, she was dating a gay guy and a bi guy at the same time, while they were dating each other too. His middle child was still making his robes by hand and tramping around in them around the house, no matter how much his younger sister pestered him to get a sewing machine. He refused.

He had opened the door one day, wearing nothing but a pair of tie-dyed pyjama pants. He saw his mother in a neat jonquil suit, with a matching hat with an equally neat feather tucked into its band. She was clutching her portfolio while fingering the string of pearls around her neck.

She took one look at him, screamed, and fainted.

He had snorted while Ella slid her arms around his waist and chuckled. Max had come pounding over with a saucepan in hand, and Fang chasing after, newly bought reading glasses sliding down his nose. Max took one look at their prostrate mother and yelled at him. He grinned in response. Fang had simply rolled his eyes and returned to their bungalow. Since it was, of course, a Saturday, his eldest and his youngest had crashed into the corridor, jockeying of space and shouting at each other over the racket their sports bags had made. The unfortunate grandmother had met her ludicrously uncivilised offspring. The woman immediately leapt to her feet, and was dragged to a soccer match (with mucho de flying clods of mud).

Suffice it to say, that was the last time they ever saw their grandmother. This had been explained to him via her personal assistant, as the product of a 'frail constitution, and delicate nerves'. He had snorted and said that it was okay if she didn't visit him anymore, and thought that his kids were barbarians. She wasn't needed. They worked perfectly in the dynamic of things.

They marked their anniversaries with bottles of warm lemonade, grimacing then laughing as they washed the taste of aristocracy out of their mouths. The warm, sweet liquid was always flat by the time they drank it. To him, and to Ella, and Max and Fang, it was the taste of freedom. It summed up everything that the last twenty years had come to symbolise. They grinned, and lay flat on the grass as their children shouted over one another inside.

They were wild.


End file.
